I want to say I am a Scala fan, or at least I want to be. I've resigned myself to learning one of these functional languages [Scala, Haskell, Erlang]. I've dabbled in all of them, far and away I have spent the most time trying to understand Scala. I've honestly used the tutorials for Haskell and Erlang more as a tool for greater understanding in Scala. I do believe that I have on some level an understanding of the basics. But, the reason why I thought I wanted to go with Scala is proving to be the most fustrating ...

So here we go, does anyone know of a site or tutorial similar to "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 hours." Something that really shows how you go from concept to working project including interpreting some third party libraries.

Or is Scala truthfully just a better Java? Meaning that it's best to learn Java before attempting Scala.

I didn't mean to infer that Scala wasn't a language in it's own right. On the contrary, I feel that it is a very good language; however, the bill of sale for Scala IS that it is better at Java than Java. So I am really trying to answer for myself how viable it is to learn Scala, while I really don't have much of an interest in learning a lot of Java. I want to use the libraries since there is the biggest advantage, as perceived by some, in using Scala.

If some of these library implementations are so 'complex' that they require, not just are best benefited by, having a good grasp of Java programming idioms, then I would like to know that I've been approaching this problem from the wrong direction.

I realize there are some good examples of some libraries that have been 'scalifed' or what have you.

2 Answers
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I don't know Scala, but you could try doing some of the bigger exercises in Real World Haskell, in Scala. If RWH refers to a particular library for, say, parsing XML, find an equivalent one and try to write idiomatic Scala that's equivalent to the Haskell in their examples.

Since this time, I have spent quite a lot of time invested in learning Haskell. I haven't really come back to Scala yet, but I can see how learning what I have in Haskell would really help me with Scala. Working out so far, once I got over the initial hump and monads clicked, Haskell really does rock pretty hard.
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M15KNov 30 '11 at 22:39

I don't know what the equivalent of "Write yourself a Scheme in 48 hours" is ... but the lack of such a tutorial doesn't by any means suggest that Scala is just a better Java. The richness of the language, the merging of OOP and FP together, and the depth of the numerous libraries that are dedicated to just Scala clearly show that Scala is a language in its own right.